Last year, my LFF closed out with an offbeat American high school movie called DEAR LEMON LIMA, which, for some reason, no distributor has yet seen fit to make a UK release to.Hopefully SPORK, which is to some degree this year`s equivalent in the LFF programme, will not have the same fate.PORK is really the figure of the film`s main character (played by Stehlin); a female identifying intersex born 14 year old, who is an outsider at school.She`s bullied by a grouping of Britney Spears obsessed blondes who find the school, led by the appropriately named Betsy Byotch (Fox), but when her friend Tootsie Roll is injured, Spork sees a way to get level with the multitude who have tortured her; win the school dance off.This film rubbed a lot of the early critics I saw it with the incorrect way, and I can understand why; the most aggressive quirkiness of the picture is definitely love it or detest it stuff, but I give to say, I plant the whole thing inventive, irreverent, amusing and charming.There are a lot of influences, filmic and otherwise, at play in SPORK.At times it can finger a though director Ghuman is nodding to every form of pop culture he can conceive of, but what this actually does is set the picture very often in its own small world.It`s never quite clearly when or where the movie is set, because the references span several decades.On the one hand it`s post 1998, because of all the Britney Spears references, on the former people are even using tube TV, VCRs and there`s not a mobile telephone to be seen.Blonde gang `The Bitches` could well have stepped out of MEAN GIRLS circa 1988 and yet the music (Britney aside) feels very modern, as does the dance culture to which Tootsie Roll and her friends belong.This very individual feeling and public means that you accept some of the film`s surreal touches, which otherwise you might battle with.Many of these moments also involve music, and few are as amusing as the founding of The Bitches, who appear singing and dancing their way down the mansion to _Pamper One More Time (and it seems that with this sequence Ghuman has hit on the one excuse good enough for the use of a Britney Spears song).There are a lot of other weird and curious things in the margins of this film, with standouts including a religious fair where there`s a mark on the wall saying "Take Your God, Make Friends" and the occasional use of animation; a child`s drawing, in range of the sky over Spork`s trailer.From sentence to clip you can see what must have been a tight budget begin to bite (this is never more notable than in the club that Spork and Tootsie Roll go to, which seems to be held together with sellotape and take around six people in it), but again, I didn`t mind an occasional roughness around the edges.Leaving this by the sole major complaint I had near the picture is the number of swearing, not because I'm offended, but because it will keep SPORK from acquiring the 12A certificate it should take in the UK to make the interview it will think most to.The new cast is excellent.Savannah Stehlin is compellingly odd as Spork, it`s light to see why, even leaving aside her intersex status, she`s an outsider at school, but she`s charming enough to see that you`re ever on her side, rooting for her sooner than laughing at her.Good as Stehlin is, the movie is very nearly stolen from below her nose by Sydney Park, whose irrepressible energy as Tootsie Roll means that near her every line scores a laugh.As the leader of The Bitches Rachel G. Fox is a perfect nightmare, like a junior version of Kim Walker`s school ruling Heather Chandler in the deathlessly brilliant HEATHERS.There are nice, if small, contributions from the cameoing adults though, including Beth Grant (in pretty much the same role she played in DEAR LEMON LIMA) and a really funny Keith David.Dance is at the core of the film, and it boasts an exceptional selection of songs and a quirky chiptune powered score by Casey James and The Stay Puft Kid, all of which adds to its slightly out of time 8-bit feel.The dance sequences are well choreographed, clearly executed (at least for the about part) by the actors and get a large push to them.This is Guman`s first feature, and for the about part it`s a positive and energetic debut.He uses a lot of stereotypes here, laughing as much at the stereotypes themselves as the kids that embody them.He likewise uses those stereotypes to, in the end, shatter many of them and to get the picture to its heartwarming ending.In that way SPORK feels like a low budget 8-Bit tribute to John Hughes, if Molly Ringwald were intersex.Your margin for quirkiness may very, but I thoroughly enjoyed SPORK, and I`ll be interested to see where Ghuman goes from here.
No comments:
Post a Comment